Variety in the Tumor Microenvironment: Integrin Splicing Regulates Stemness

Recently in Cell Reports, Goel et al. (2014) identified mechanisms underlying cellular heterogeneity in triple negative breast cancer. They find that expression of α6 integrin and its splice variants differs between epithelial and mesenchymal tumor cell subpopulations, the latter of which relies on VEGF signaling to promote cancer stem cell function